Enlightenment Through Understanding

Notes on Trump Military Parade

February 12, 2018

In terms of optics and political strategy, as Jim notes, Trump’s military parade is a win. The left finds itself in a bind of having to oppose the military, which is how Bush won in 2004. However, such a parade seems like a way of inoculating Americans to more military spending and interventionism. Considering we’ve been stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 15 years, with no resolution in sight (and by design, such intervention is un-winnable), it’s more like a parade symbolizing America’s inability/refusal to win, than what a parade is supposed to celebrate, which is victory. Even I have to admit, the political fetishization of the military has gone too far. The military nowadays is less about winning than about creating make-work for contractors and personnel, as well as providing welfare and other programs for an increasingly large population of veterans, but also signaling dominance (big stick diplomacy). It’s effectively a right-wing version of Keynesianism. Jim discuses the “fall of Kings that began in the nineteenth century,” but the fall of the British empire in the 20th century is also of note, and as many pundits have noted there are parallels between British expansionism/colonization and American interventionism, although I don’t think America will suffer the same fate as Britain, which After WW2 was no longer able to hold on to its colonies and ceded dominance to America, Japan, and Germany.